Undercurrents and Riptides
by JennMel
Summary: It pulls at you, pulls at your feet, tugging you under into the cold and the dark. Something is inside Ash, something nameless, and it's getting stronger. But he won't go down without a fight. A oneshot to sort out what's really going on with Ash, and the direction I hope the story takes. Serious spoilers for ep 11 The Wolf Inside.


**Notes:** I posted this theory on my tumblr SanctumSlider (tagged Ash Tyler if you want a read) about how I think Ash and Voq's storyline should go, because I love Ash and don't want him wiped out by Voq. This story was the result of getting way too deep in my own fanon and will probably be rendered AU after episode 12 but here we go anyway!

 **Undercurrents and Riptides**

Everything will seem different, but it just feels that way because of what's happened to you.

You've been through a lot, adjustment is understandable.

This is normal.

You're not the only one who's gone through this.

You're safe.

It's okay.

Awake, he tried to believe it. He forced himself to. If you repeat something enough to yourself, then surely that makes it real?

But what is real?

An insidious knowledge lingered on the edge of his mind, there, just waiting. A tic, a thorn…

Because it wasn't. It wasn't normal. He wasn't safe, and he most definitely wasn't okay.

If you look at your hands, and think they're not yours, what does that mean?

If you look in the mirror, and for a fleeting instant see someone else behind your eyes, then who does that make you?

If you start to slip into sleep, only to feel a stronger force sucking you down deeper, deeper than you ever want to go, what will happen on the day you're too late to wake yourself up?

Before the Klingon ship… before he stood face to face with L'Rell surrounded by her dead kin, he could manage. Push things down, deep down. Push that something else down as well. Push down the unknown, down into the dark.

It was fine. He was fine. It was okay. It really was. He could do this.

He even started to believe in himself again.

But then he started to feel a pull towards her. Towards that _woman_. His captor. His rapist.

A tugging at his feet, when all he wanted was to stay with Michael, where it was safe. Where he was Ash.

That was when he started to lose time. That was when he started to scare himself.

One moment he was talking to L'Rell, safe with a containment field between them, and the next they were both across the room.

One moment he was in sickbay with Dr Culber listening with building fear to a diagnosis he didn't want to hear, and the next he was walking into the transport room.

And each time he came back to himself, it felt a little bit harder, his limbs leaden and awkward as if they were not his own.

Now wasn't the time. Deal with it later, focus on the mission. It's just your imagination, you can cope, Michael needs you. _Get a hold of yourself!_

Stuck on an enemy ship full of faces that should be friendly.

One mistake and they'll either end up dead or down in the bowels of the ship, screaming with Captain Lorca.

He couldn't let that happen. He wouldn't.

And for two days, two terrifying yet perfect days, he thought he was getting better. That was what made it worse, what made it so cruel.

He had let himself believe, he let himself hope that it really had been his imagination. The nightmares abated, his limbs felt steadier, there was no more lost time.

But truly, honestly?

He had always known. He had known something was there, waiting, ready to pull him under and drown him in the dark and the cold.

 _Remember we confirmed that no personality engrams were hidden under your native identity? Well, there's some research that suggests that a new personality could be placed atop it, like an overlay, with the original personality still intact underneath._

But he hadn't thought… not in his darkest nightmares…

When he saw the Klingon, an unnameable bile welled up within him, suffocating and cloying as it tore at his control.

And it felt so _angry_.

This time he didn't lose time. This time he was screaming as he drowned, buffeted by the strength of another mind wrenching his autonomy away as easily as if he were a child.

Voq.

The knowledge nearly broke him, right there as he watched through eyes that were not his own, as the body that looked like the one he remembered went toe to toe with this universe's own Voq.

 _You're not you._

And all the pieces started to make sense, slotting in one by one to create a sickening tableau of what his life had been since the Battle of the Binary Stars.

But he didn't want to see. If he saw, if he believed, he would be lost.

" _Tyler!"_

Michael. Michael's voice. She was angry, confused, he could hear it in the way she cried out his name. He couldn't, he needed…

He slammed back into control as Voq's anger spent, but it was hard. It wasn't quite right. He just needed to forget. Lose time again, forget what he had realised. Because the more he started to believe, the weaker he started to feel. Things were misting, things weren't quite right. Insubstantial thoughts and feelings and memories and _no please don't I'm here, I'm here, I'm Ash Tyler, I'm me, I'm alive, I'm here, I'm human-_

But Michael was challenging him, she was dredging up things he needed to try and forget. The more she spoke, the more she tried desperately to understand the truth of what was happening to him, the more he slipped, the stronger Voq became.

He couldn't bear the look on her face as he spoke to her about L'Rell. About L'Rell's power over him, over the body he lived in, the body that-

No.

"She brainwashed you!"

Was it wrong to wish that she had? That it was that simple? That there was a logical explanation to the silent, insidious tugging beneath him, the sand on which his foundations were built.

Culber.

The lost time snapped back, a horrifying rush of memory, a dissociation-

 _You're not you._

The sound, the feeling of warm skin under his fingers, the vibration of bone-

 _You're not you._

But he wasn't Voq either.

A rising tide, and with it came a chilling certainty.

He wasn't Voq, but he was in Voq's body. A body that looked like his, but wasn't. All those memories… the torture… he had imagined his face, his body. But it was Voq's. It was the surgery that stole Ash's face.

His human body was a twisted corpse, long gone cold. It died screaming in a Klingon ship, months ago. It watched L'Rell choose it for a purpose. This purpose.

The tide pulled, icy tendrils that threatened to tear him apart.

Desperately, he reached for Michael. He knew it was already too late, he could feel Voq rising within him, disdainful of the human who had served its purpose, ready to sweep it away.

His voice choked, his tongue thick and heavy in his skull. His lips brushed her forehead, but his muscles were frozen. Words tumbled, forced out before Voq could steal them.

"I tried, Michael."

Water closed over his head, pulling him deep, deep, into the cold and the dark as the sheer force of Voq's personality threatened to tear him apart.

He was the alien in this body, not Voq.

It would be so easy to let go, to dissipate. He was dead anyway, had been for months.

But he couldn't. He wanted to live, he wanted this body, he wanted to protect his friends from the monster now in control.

So he balled himself tight, gathering the scraps of himself and treasuring them in the dark even as he was suffocated by Voq.

And when the body was weakened and the mind shocked by a few seconds in space, Ash dug in deeper.

And every time one of his friends, his crewmates, called Voq 'Tyler', as they strapped his body down and tried to find the answers, Ash got a little bit stronger.

Because he was human. He was Ash Tyler, Starfleet lieutenant, Seattle native. He was more than a cluster of memories, he was more than just a façade to help a Klingon in their mission to infiltrate Discovery. He was _alive_ , whether L'Rell had intended it or not.

His human body was dead, so Ash would take this one.

He would pull Voq down into the dark and the cold, and make him pay for everything he had done while wearing Ash's face.

He would win.

 **FIN**


End file.
